“Happy Together” by The Turtles

"Happy Together" became the Turtles' one and only Billboard number one, though a string of acts had turned it down first. Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon wrote it while they were in the Magicians, and the Turtles, stuck in a slump, were the ones who said yes. They cut it at Sunset Sound, with Chip Douglas, the bassist who had just joined, working up the horn and backing-vocal parts, and it came out in January 1967 backed with "Like the Seasons", later turning up on their third album, also called Happy Together.

The trick is the contrast: a lyric about love that isn't returned, riding a melody that sounds like pure sunshine. It also went to 2 in Canada and 12 in Britain, landed the band on The Ed Sullivan Show that year, and entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.